"Still Life at 19"

                             "Still Life at 19"
                        Somewhere quiet, we sit in on
                        ourselves five years ago.  Bagels
                        toast not so far away, strands of
                        your orange hair falling in small
                        mountains of poppy seed like bleached
                        nooses; the bright morning pallor
                        leaves us deaf, blind in this Summer
                        snowstorm with today’s leaky forecast;
                        my silver nose ring sniffing for the night’s
                        lost white line, a cheap telescope for
                        stars already crumbled.  We speak between
                        palpitations with a gaze that would make snails
                        nervous.  A man with graying hair in khaki
                        jeans carrying a baby passes us: we sneer.
                        Because even then, even now, when our nasal
                        passages do not need weathermen, we were
                        new.